Cancel Publish: A Call For the End of Tumblr Book Deals

On April 6, the proprietor of the popular Tumblr blog Hipster Puppies—a repository for photos of dogs dressed in Ray Ban Wayfarers, fake mustaches and Keffiyehs—announced that he had secured a book deal. The man behind said Tumblr isn’t some Internet rube made good; he is Christopher R. Weingarten, a smart, apoplectic rock critic who subverted his profession with a Twitter account as professional experiment, @1000TimesYes, wherein he reviewed 1,000 albums from 2009, each at 140 characters or less. Weingarten’s Hipster Puppies was both savvy and cynical. It seized on classic Internet bait (puppies, hipsters) and did so with a sneer and just enough cuteness to go over with insiders, the unwitting, and the publishing industry: a masterful triangulation. It was simultaneously charming and revolting. And now we are at the end.

Next week another spawn of social media will be published: Shit My Dad Says, the delightful Twitter account of Justin Halpern, a 29-year-old who lives with his 74-year-old father and quotes his curious, context-less commentary will be a compiled by It Books. This fall on CBS Shit My Dad Says will more than likely be a sitcom starring William Shatner—though the title might not stick. This news, coupled with Weingarten’s coup officially confirmed what many have known for some time—Tumblr and Twitter book deals are completely out of control. Nick Douglas got there first with his 2009 collection of 140 character quips, Twitter Wit. But the easy-to-use social blogging platform, Tumblr, so terribly aware of its user base’s sensibility, has co-opted the trend, even establishing a home page of sorts for the books that have recently nabbed deals. Tumblr is a fount of in-jokes and non-sequiturs, occupied by people so well-versed in Internet, the snake often chokes on its own tail. But once upon a time, the "You can do it, too!" ethic of Tumblr-born books were charming. This Is Why You’re Fat. Garfield Minus Garfield. Even the recent Look At This Fucking Hipster. But these Tumblrs--compact, clearly delineated, devoid of investment, so perfectly Internet--are no more worthy of a book than the grand daddy of this phenomenon, Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like, the Caucasian-crucifying guide to middle brow haute du jour. That was a good idea for a web site, a place to spend four minutes before returning to the spreadsheet you were working on. As a book, it was a helluva web site.

Lander’s success has bred a hivemind of "idea" people, hoping to cash in. I know, I have participated in conversations (often in bars, after 1am) seeking an idea worthy of a book deal. Stuff My Cat Watches On TV; The Truth About Native Americans; Hot Girls With Cleft Chins: these would make awesome Tumblrs. But not books. Never books. Because, aside from the lack of cultural currency, they simply would not sell. Next time you’re in Barnes and Noble, see for yourself. There is no sadder display table in these stores than the lonely, cordoned-off Seen On The Internet endcap. Limp, flipped-through copies of months old paperbacks, punctuated by the stench of a middling advance buried between the pages. People who are not on Tumblr—which is well, almost everyone—have no idea what these flimsy things are. Tumblr.com reports it houses less than five million "publishers," a deceiving phrase that doesn’t quite quantify the actual number of active Tumblr users. It could be four million. Or one million. Or 70 dudes in Brooklyn. It’s hard to say. It’s a thriving community, for sure, but still an insular one. The books even more so.

Not all of these books are created equal. The forthcoming Mad Men Unbuttoned, an annotated history and analysis of the AMC show’s cultural antiquity, from the creator of The Footnotes of Mad Men, is anticipated. But that’s a rare bird. There is another book, Stuff Hipsters Hate, coming. When the deal for that book was announced agent Jason Allen Ashlock explained to Galleycat why he connected at the idea: "The blog to book projects seem tired because so many of them have been one-trick ponies. They’re based around a gimmick: They tell a joke and then they tell it again and again. Image, caption, laugh. Image, caption, laugh. Their concepts are thin. The ones that have been really successful, and have a chance of making the backlist, have had a clear editorial voice: there’s an honest critique or cultural observation built into the ostensibly humorous project." Which is exactly right. But it does not apply to Stuff Hipsters Hate, a narrow, "image, caption, laugh" Tumblr if one exists. Trenchant analysis, cultural reflection, long-lasting historical insight: none of these books have achieved that; the pretense that they might simply isn’t true. The only historical record being added to is that Tumblr book deal landing page. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to dudeswith3nipples.tumblr.com.

Sean Fennessey definitely has at least five Tumblrs registered in his name.

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